· · · ? · · ·
Over the next year, Eirik’s hands changed.
Not in the dramatic way the sagas liked — not yet. At six, local years, he wasn’t building the kind of size that made adults squint and say that one will be trouble. The change was quieter, the kind that only showed up if you were watching closely.
The skin at his knuckles thickened. The heel of his palm toughened from the striking post. His fingers learned grips the way a mouth learned a language: through a thousand small repetitions until they stopped thinking and started knowing. When he reached for things now — a cup, a wooden practice knife, a strip of dried meat — there was more certainty in how his hand settled, like a tool finally fitting the work it was meant to do.
He noticed it one morning in the healer’s house.
Sigrid had him at the workbench, and he was rolling a poultice between his palms the way she’d shown him: slow pressure, even spread, don’t tear the leaf fibers, don’t crush the root too hard or you’d lose half the scent to the air. His hands worked without wobble.
He looked down and, for a moment, felt the strange double-layer of it: these were still small hands, still a child’s hands — but they weren’t soft anymore.
Not like last year.
Not like when he’d started.
Sigrid saw him looking. She didn’t ask why. She simply reached over, adjusted his thumb by half a finger-width, and said gently, “There. Feel how it changes.”
It did change. The poultice tightened. Held. Became better.
Eirik nodded once, serious about it the way children got serious about small things when they felt like they mattered.
Sigrid kissed the top of his head without ceremony and went back to grinding dried bark in the mortar.
Warmth, not rules. Instruction, not performance.
That was her way.
And somehow it made him want to get it right more than any harshness ever could have.
· · · ? · · ·
Bj?rn’s way was different.
Bj?rn’s way was hours.
Bj?rn didn’t rush him, but he also didn’t let him drift. There was a difference between unhurried and indulgent, and Bj?rn lived in that gap like it had been built for him.
Footwork became something Eirik did while thinking about other things. Weight transfer stopped being a concept and turned into a reflex. The drills repeated until they lost their names and became part of the day, like eating, like sleeping, like the northern light changing.
And the seasons kept arriving, steady as a heartbeat.
They weren’t different from Earth in shape — spring, summer, autumn, winter — but time itself here was stretched. Months were longer, as if the world took a deeper breath before it moved on. A “year” in Járnheimr held more days than his old one, more long mornings, more repeated work.
A child could be six here and still feel, inside, like they’d lived nearer to nine Earth-years of waking hours and memory.
Which meant the work stacked up faster than anyone expected.
Including, sometimes, Bj?rn.
One morning, as Eirik finished a stepping combination against the post — heel set, hips turn, strike, recover, strike again — Bj?rn watched in silence.
“You’re ahead of where I was,” Bj?rn said at last.
Eirik, breathing evenly, didn’t stop. “How far ahead?”
Bj?rn’s eyes stayed on the movement. “Enough that it matters.”
Eirik liked that answer more than praise. It meant his father was being honest.
Bj?rn stepped closer and tapped Eirik’s shoulder with two fingers. “Don’t let your head drag your body.”
Eirik paused, listening.
Bj?rn pointed at Eirik’s chest, then at his feet. “Some things you can understand. Some things you have to become. Your mind is useful. But it’s not the one taking the hits.”
“What’s taking the hits?” Eirik asked.
Bj?rn’s mouth twitched like it wanted to smile and didn’t. “The hours.”
He walked away like that was the whole lesson.
It was.
· · · ? · · ·
Sigrid’s curriculum ran in parallel, threaded through the day like a quieter river.
She didn’t announce lessons. She simply made space for them.
A sprig on the bench.
A jar opened.
A question asked like it was casual when it wasn’t.
“What’s this one,” she’d say, holding up a dried leaf.
Eirik would sniff it, close his eyes, and try to feel the faint warmth under the scent. The way herbs carried little signatures if you paid attention. Most people cooked with plants like they were dead things.
Sigrid handled them like they were sleeping.
“Yarrow,” he’d say, sometimes.
She’d nod and slide it aside, pleased but not making a show of it.
Sometimes he’d be wrong.
She never punished wrong. She corrected it.
“This is meadowsweet,” she’d say, and then she’d tell him a story about where it grew best — near water, in good soil, stubborn as a rumor — and suddenly it wasn’t just a plant, it was a piece of the world with a place in it.
That was how she taught.
Not lists. Not charts.
Anchors.
When she finally began teaching him channeling in earnest, it came the same way.
Not flashy.
Not the kind of thing boys bragged about.
“Put your hand here,” she said once, and placed his palm on his own forearm. “Feel your warmth. Not your blood. Not your skin. Deeper. The path under the path.”
He tried.
At first he felt nothing but his own impatience.
Sigrid waited like impatience was weather.
Then, eventually, he felt it — the faintest current in him, something that wasn’t muscle and wasn’t thought. He swallowed, suddenly careful.
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“There,” she murmured. “Good. Don’t chase it. Let it come to you.”
He did, and for a moment it was like finding a thread in the dark and realizing it was attached to everything.
“That’s not healing,” she told him later, when he asked if he was learning what she did. “It’s keeping yourself from falling apart when you need to keep moving.”
“What’s the difference?” he asked.
Sigrid glanced at him over the rim of her cup. “When you can feel a body like it’s your own, down to the smallest aches, and guide it without taking too much or too little… that’s healing.”
She set the cup down and touched his cheek with the back of her fingers, absent-minded, affectionate. “What you’re learning will keep you alive when you’re hurt and nobody is there to save you.”
Eirik didn’t like thinking about that.
Which, he suspected, was why she wanted him to learn it.
· · · ? · · ·
? Ding ?
? Rúna Acquired: ?nd-Channeling (Basic) (Lv. 1) ?
?nd-Channeling (Basic) (Lv. 1) — [Grár | Common]
You can guide ?nd through your own channels deliberately, without flooding.
At this level it is simple work: circulation, settling, recovery.
Not dramatic. Not heroic. But real.
S?fnun gained.
? Ding ?
? Rúna: ?nd-Channeling (Basic) — Level Up (Lv. 1 → Lv. 2) ?
?nd-Channeling (Basic) (Lv. 2) — [Grár | Common]
You can run a mild regenerative current over bruises and surface injuries.
You are learning the difference between “toughing it out” and “recovering properly.”
S?fnun gained.
· · · ? · · ·
The first time the visitors came, Eirik almost missed them because he was busy being miserable in the yard.
Intervals.
Bj?rn’s newest favorite cruelty.
Eirik was halfway through his second set when the air of the settlement… shifted. Not sound first. Something subtler. The way people’s attention leans toward the same point without anyone speaking.
He finished the sprint, walked the recovery, and turned.
Three horses.
An adult rider and two boys.
The adult was the kind of man who sat a saddle like he’d been born on it, cloak good wool, posture clean, sword at his hip that looked too fine for a place like Járnvik. Not gaudy. Just better. The kind of better that didn’t need shouting.
The boys hopped down before the man even finished speaking to Ulf.
And immediately began doing what boys did anywhere in any world when they were unsupervised for thirty seconds:
They started messing with each other.
One shoved the other’s shoulder.
The other shoved back harder.
Then both pretended they hadn’t.
Eirik’s mouth twitched. So much for noble composure.
One of them — broad, bright-eyed, cheeks full from good food — noticed Eirik watching and stared back like it was a contest.
Leif drifted up beside Eirik like a curious crow.
“Who are those?” Leif whispered, even though whispering in a settlement this small was a purely symbolic act.
“Important,” Eirik said.
“Which one?”
“The older one.”
Leif squinted. “The kids look important too.”
“They look like they’ve never had to chop frozen wood,” Eirik said.
Leif nodded solemnly. “That’s true. Their hands are soft.”
The broad boy stuck his tongue out at the other boy.
The other boy immediately threw a clump of dirt at him.
It missed. Hit the horse’s leg instead.
The horse shifted and snorted, offended.
Ulf’s head snapped around like a hawk catching movement.
The adult rider barked something low.
The boys froze in identical guilty silence.
Leif leaned toward Eirik. “I like them.”
Eirik sighed and turned back to his intervals. “Third set.”
“Now?” Leif said, scandalized. “While they’re watching?”
“Especially while they’re watching.”
He ran.
He did not glance over until the end.
And when he did, the broad boy was still staring — but the stare had changed.
Not challenge now.
Interest.
The kind that meant: Oh. You’re serious.
Bj?rn, at the far end of the yard, had also been watching.
Not the visitors.
Eirik.
The way he recovered between sprints.
The way he didn’t lose his form when it hurt.
The way he kept the work clean.
Bj?rn’s face stayed calm.
But something in his eyes sharpened, as if he’d just found an edge he hadn’t known was there.
· · · ? · · ·
The next morning, the boys came back without the adult.
That meant they’d been told: Stay out of trouble.
And had interpreted it as: Find the nearest trouble and stand next to it.
Astrid was already in the yard, swinging a practice axe that was a little too big for her on purpose. She liked everything one size too heavy. Like she was arguing with the future and planning to win.
Leif sat on the low stump with a stick, whittling absolutely nothing and acting like it was important.
The broad boy walked straight up like he owned the yard.
“I’m Halvard,” he said.
The other boy hesitated, then mumbled, “Sigvald.”
Halvard looked Eirik up and down like a kid copying what he’d seen grown men do, but with none of the smoothness.
“What are you doing?” Halvard demanded.
Eirik stared at him. “Training.”
Halvard pointed at the striking post. “That’s boring.”
“It hurts,” Eirik said.
Halvard blinked, thrown off. “So?”
“It hurts on purpose,” Eirik clarified.
Astrid snorted loudly, axe resting on her shoulder. “He likes things that hurt. It’s weird.”
Leif pointed his stick at Halvard like a judge issuing a sentence. “If you’re important, you have to prove it. That’s the rule.”
Halvard lit up. “Yes.”
Sigvald’s eyes widened. “Is that a rule?”
Leif nodded with complete conviction. “It is now.”
Halvard took two steps toward the post and threw a punch at it like he’d seen someone else do once. It landed wrong. He shook his hand immediately, trying not to show it hurt.
Astrid laughed. Not mean. Just honest.
Halvard’s ears went red. “It’s… harder than it looks.”
Eirik stepped up beside him. “You hit with your arm. You want to hit with your whole body.”
Halvard squinted at him. “Show me.”
Eirik did — one clean strike, weight transfer, hip rotation, knuckles set.
The post thunked.
Halvard stared, then immediately tried to copy it, over-rotated, nearly fell into the dirt, caught himself, and pretended that had been planned.
Leif clapped once. “Excellent performance.”
Sigvald finally spoke up, desperate to contribute something. “My father says if you hit wood too much you get splinters.”
Astrid stared at him. “Do you think we’re licking the post?”
Sigvald flushed.
Halvard burst out laughing, and to Eirik’s mild surprise it wasn’t a cruel laugh. Just a kid laugh. Sharp and bright.
For ten minutes the yard became something else: not training, not politics, not important families and frontier settlements — just kids testing each other and failing and trying again.
Then Bj?rn walked over.
The air shifted around him the way it always did when he decided to be present.
Halvard straightened instantly. Too fast. Too practiced.
Bj?rn looked at him once, then looked at Eirik.
“Stance,” Bj?rn said.
Eirik planted his feet. Breathed. Dropped his ?nd down. Found the earth.
Held.
Bj?rn nodded once.
Then — very casually — Bj?rn said, “Again. Mid-movement.”
Eirik stepped, shifted, and kept Earthroot alive through the transition.
Halvard’s eyes widened in involuntary surprise.
Not because he understood the mechanics.
Because he could feel the difference.
Because even with youth and resources, his body hadn’t learned that kind of rooted quiet yet.
Bj?rn saw Halvard’s reaction.
Then Bj?rn looked back at his son, and for the first time in a long while his expression wasn’t just instruction.
It was recognition.
Not my boy is talented.
Something closer to:
My boy is wrong, in a way the world is going to notice.
Bj?rn’s jaw set very slightly, as if something inside him had clicked into place.
Eirik felt it like a door closing.
Not fear.
Resolve.
· · · ? · · ·
That evening, after the visitors were gone and the house had settled into its familiar noises — Rí singing softly to herself in the sleeping alcove, Sigrid moving through the kitchen with calm hands — Bj?rn sat with Eirik on the bench outside.
The sky was pale with late light. The fjord wind smelled like cold stone and water.
Bj?rn didn’t speak for a long time.
Then, very quietly: “They saw it.”
Eirik didn’t pretend not to know. “Yes.”
Bj?rn’s eyes stayed on the treeline. “It isn’t just that you’re ahead.”
Eirik waited.
Bj?rn’s voice stayed even, but there was something tight underneath it — not anger, not alarm. A kind of carefulness. Like handling a blade you respected.
“You build faster than you should,” Bj?rn said. “You learn faster than you should. Your foundation holds under loads that would twist another child in half.”
Eirik swallowed. He wanted to make it lighter, to make a joke, to say It’s fine the way people said it when it wasn’t.
Bj?rn didn’t give him room.
Bj?rn turned and looked him in the eye. “That means two things.”
“What?” Eirik asked.
“First,” Bj?rn said, “it means we do not get sloppy. Ever.”
Eirik nodded.
“And second,” Bj?rn said, voice lowering, “it means people will want to own you, steer you, recruit you, marry you, leash you — whatever their kind does.”
Eirik stared at him.
Bj?rn didn’t blink.
“You’re six,” Bj?rn finished, as if that fact offended him. “You should be worrying about whether Leif put a beetle in your boot. Not whether someone with a better sword thinks you’re a useful asset.”
From inside the house, Rí squealed with delight about something — probably frost, or a spoon, or the fact that her own toes existed.
Bj?rn’s expression softened for half a second at the sound.
Then he looked back at Eirik.
“So,” Bj?rn said simply, “we work.”
Eirik felt something steady settle in his chest — not excitement, not dread.
A clean understanding.
“Okay,” he said.
Bj?rn nodded once, satisfied.
Sigrid came to the doorway, towel over her shoulder, and looked at the two of them with quiet affection.
“Come in,” she called softly. “Food’s ready, and if you two talk about training through dinner again I’ll start assigning chores out of spite.”
Bj?rn stood. “Cruel.”
Sigrid lifted an eyebrow. “Fair.”
Eirik followed them inside, hands rougher than last year, heart steadier than last year, the seasons widening out ahead of him like a road you could walk for a long time if you kept moving.
? Skill Gains Logged ?
Earthroot — [Grár | Common] · Lv.8 → Lv.11
Your connection to the ground now persists through short bursts of movement.
Unarmed Fundamentals — [Grár | Common] · Lv.1 → Lv.5
Your body is beginning to remember what your mind already knows.
Keen Eye — [Grár | Common] · Lv.5 → Lv.7
You are starting to read the “weight” of another person’s cultivation by presence alone.
S?fnun gained across all entries.
The vessel is filling.
The Wyrd notes: you are building like someone older.
It is not praising.
It is warning you to keep the foundation clean.